Sea oats

March 9, 1983

In tangled miles of grass they bind the sand, their roots caught firmly in uncertain soil, David before Goliath, sling in hand, each time the ocean's anger starts to boil. On guard against an unremitting sea, this fragile army curtsies in the wind with tufts aloft, part of the beach debris, where land and water war, undisciplined. You on the shore, taking a traveler's stroll, thinking perhaps to bring some relic back, leave undisturbed this balance of patrol - destroying sea oats widens the attack. In combat, when the greatest will subdue, the weak may be the stronger of the two.